Food products made by combining a food mass and a baked item are known from the prior art. Typically, such food products are composed of alternating layers of food mass and baked items. The corresponding methods to manufacture these products normally include a moulding step in which the food mass is brought into a desired shape. However, new product designs often represent new challenges for the manufacturing techniques in this field since they often ask for specific solutions so that the high quality standards of food products in terms of visual appearance, taste and nutritional value can be fulfilled.
To be successful in the marketplace, these products as well as their production often have to satisfy contradicting requirements. For example, customers have high expectancies concerning taste, consistency and visual appearance. Still, the price of these products is a very important argument in their decision to purchase. Thus, the producers of food products do not only have to provide these products with a high quality but also need the know-how to realize these high quality standards at a low cost.
Especially in case of multi-component food products, the different material properties of the components generally represent a challenge for production as well as for the durability of the desired characteristics during shelf life. More specifically, these products have to retain their characteristics over time and possibly over a wide range of temperatures.
It may also represent an incentive to create a multi-component product to facilitate its consumption. For example, EP 0 682 872 A1 discloses a food product based on an edible paste. The edible paste is based on caramelized sugar and condensed milk. It is used to produce a food product constituted of a laminar core out of that paste which is covered on its faces by a thin layer of wafer. Here, the application of wafers overcomes the negative aspects of the paste such as its stickiness by providing a solid layer that enables the use of the paste within a product so it becomes consumable for a customer.
Although EP 0 682 872 A1 manages to circumvent the stickiness of the product, another major challenge for multi-component products are the side faces on which the different components are often visible for the customer. It is of high interest that these faces keep their visual appearance during shelf life. Therefore, the multiple components, having different mechanical, chemical and thermal properties, have to be combined in a way so that, for example, relative movement between these layers does not occur. Otherwise, the visual appeal of the food product may well be negatively affected.
Further, the size of a food product is a critical design choice since the size of such a product has to appeal to a customer. Naturally, different groups of customers have divergent conceptions about the right size of such a product. Therefore, this is also an issue that has to be addressed during the design phase of a food product.